Category: Uncategorized

Today I attended a lunchtime seminar at Lincoln University by two visiting researchers from the USA: Professor Jim Trappe and Dr Todd Elliott. Prof Trappe is a renowned mycorrhizal ecologist, and Dr Elliott is toted as a "world traveler, naturalist, photographer, species discoverer, artist and primitive skills trainer". Whatever that last attribute means. Dr Elliott… Continue reading Fungal Interactions

New Zealand wrens, the Acanthisittidae, are an odd bunch. They don't seem to fit into the traditional bird phylogenetic tree, and they certainly aren't particularly similar to the old world wrens Certhioidea. Studies have shown that they are more "basal" (as Dr Jamie Wood puts it), or a sister group to the Eupasseres (all the other… Continue reading The Wren Conundrum

Ashley Dene Farm is a research farm 15km east of Lincoln, owned by Lincoln University for over a hundred years. Last year (2016), a research and development station was created on the site and is used by Lincoln Hub partners for agricultural research. These include Landcare Research, AgResearch, DairyNZ, Lincoln University, and Plant & Food Research. Graeme Rogers… Continue reading Out and About With the Soils Technician

Yesterday and today I have been lucky enough to be offered a chance to work with Carina Davis, a molecular technician in the GEM Lab (an amalgamation of the Gamete, Ecotoxicology & Molecular Laboratories). Carina specialises in "new technologies", and she often works with detecting environmental DNA (eDNA) - the DNA, or fragments of, that… Continue reading New Techniques for eDNA Detection

Really interesting concept – pseudoteaching. I fear I have been very much guilty of this by using multimedia in my lessons, and assuming that it helps ALL students understand scientific ideas better. However, it appears that if a student wrongly believes that they understand, watching a video merely reinforces their misconception.

Today we have a guest post from Derek Muller, a physics educator who runs the science video blog Veritasium. Derek is @veritasium on Twitter.

I have made some great pseudoteaching – but it was all in the name of research, let me assure you.

My interests in physics, education, and film converged in a doctoral dissertation at the University of Sydney starting in 2004. Since nearly all forms of education involve multimedia presentations in some form (e.g. a lecture with pictures, an illustrated text, an animation with narration, etc.), I proposed that, by studying this confined unit, we can learn some of the fundamental mechanics of teaching and learning which are at play in broader contexts. My central research question was: how does one design effective multimedia to teach physics?

I made an eight-minute video on Newton’s First and Second Laws and it had all the hallmarks of…

EdTech, or Educational Technology, has become somewhat of a buzzword of recent times. In fact, you'd be hard pressed to find any school these days who doesn't have a strategy/mission/vision for the incorporation of technology into teaching and learning. In my opinion, this is a good thing as long as the tech used is carefully… Continue reading Starting the journey into EdTech

A friend once told me: “Of course science has a sexism problem. Society has a sexism problem!” True, but there’s definitely more to it than that. I follow a lot of kickass women in science and half my Twitter feed is filled with wonder, passion, progress, and safety goggles. The other half is filled with… Continue reading How can we fix sexism in science? | Gadgette